10 movies to help you beat the fiscal-cliff blues

Times could be getting tougher but these films will give you hope

By

DavidB. Wilkerson

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CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- As politicians engage in a testy battle in Washington that could decide the fate of the U.S. economy in the new year, it’s good to be reminded what people are capable of when they work together to overcome difficult circumstances.

Now he offers us 10 more and once again they’re not sugary. Austerlitz is a great admirer of films that make some attempt to show life for what it is, both its joys and its sorrows.

“I think those are the films that stick with us,” he said in an interview. “The movies that too easily glide over the difficulties of life, in giving us some celebratory or optimistic perspective, are sort of forgettable because they’re so clearly irrelevant or dishonest. The movies that give us some of that darkness stay with me because they’re more true to life.”

Here are his 10 movie picks for beating the fiscal-cliff blues:

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1. ‘The Kid’ (1921)

Two-disc special edition DVD, from Warner Home Video
TWX, +0.23%
. This out-of-print 2004 release is much in demand, so it’s pricey, but it is available from Amazon, starting at $48. Also included in The Chaplin Collection, Vol.2, which also features “A Woman of Paris” (1923), “The Circus” (1928),” “City Lights” (1931), Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and “The Chaplin Revue” (1959), a collection of Chaplin short subjects introduced by the filmmaker himself. Even used, the box set goes for more than $100 on Amazon.

Because the film has long been in the public domain, there are any number of additional DVD releases, but the Warner Home Video version is usually regarded as the best.

Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in this story of a child (Jackie Coogan) who is abandoned by his unwed mother (Edna Purviance) and winds up being cared for by the Tramp (Chaplin).

“A lot of older films, especially silent films, require a kind of translation for people who aren’t familiar with them. But Chaplin’s films don’t require that at all,” Austerlitz said.

“I found ‘The Kid’ to be very moving, in terms of the love that [the Tramp] develops for the child, and the feelings the child develops for him, as a father figure. There’s probably some autobiographical resonance for Chaplin, who had a very difficult childhood.”

Austerlitz says many film fans still primarily see Chaplin as a performer, and don’t fully appreciate his skill as a filmmaker, “specifically as a director of actors.” He coaxes fine performances from his cast, particularly Jackie Coogan, who is best known today for playing Uncle Fester in the 1960s television series “The Addams Family.”

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2. ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ (1946)

Latest DVD edition coming Jan. 15 from Warner Home Video. Available for preorder from Amazon for $13.

The winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, “The Best Years of Our Lives” is perhaps the definitive story of American veterans returning from World War II. Army Sgt. Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Air Force Cpt. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) and sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) — who has lost his arms in the war — make their way back, encountering various troubles as they try to readjust to civilian life. March won the Best Actor Oscar, while Russell, a real-life double amputee, won for Best Supporting Actor.

“We tend to think of movies about World War II made during the war and immediately after as being heartwarming sap or lowest-common denominator combat films,” Austerlitz explained. “ ‘The Best Years Of Our Lives’ is notably different. It’s realistic in its approach to soldiers who lived through these terrible experiences who come back home … It surprised me when I saw it for its willingness to engage with that darkness. It doesn’t stint on that, and yet it does emerge with something like a happy ending for each of the returning characters.”

The decision to use Russell is the most clear example of the film’s refusal to traffic in phoniness. “That’s an astonishing thing in a movie from 1946,” Austerlitz said. “The movie actually plays a very interesting game with us. At first it doesn’t show us his hands, and we almost make the assumption that they’re going to do the standard thing and cast an actor who has both of his arms. When it’s revealed that the actor has artificial limbs, so that he and the character are one and the same, it’s a recognition that what would previously have been too shocking to reveal had become a part of the new normal.”

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3. ‘Stars In My Crown’ (1950)

DVD from Warner Archive Collection. On-demand DVD-R available at Amazon or WBShop.com for $19.

Parson Joziah Gray (Joel McCrea) comes to a small Southern town to preach and becomes involved in the hamlet’s various trials and tribulations.

“What strikes me about this film is that it’s both paying homage to a very traditional America of the sort that we probably all have in our minds — the kind that I think the movies actually sort of created — and at the same time kind of undermines it in a very interesting way.”

Austerlitz notes that director Jacques Tourneur and screenwriter Joe David Brown (who adapted his novel for the screen) set up a believable portrait of the day-to-day life of someone who deals with spiritual matters.

“It isn’t simplistic,” he said. “And I think Joel McCrea is one of the most underrated performers of his era, the ideal embodiment of the sort of plain-spoken Everyman that people associate with someone like Jimmy Stewart.”

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4. ‘Gran Torino’ (2008)

On DVD and Blu-ray from Warner Home Video. At Amazon, DVD, $5.50 (widescreen version); Blu-ray, $8.

Embittered, elderly Detroiter Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) gets involved in the life of a Hmong teen who tries to steal his 1972 Gran Torino.

Austerlitz said the film’s portrait of an embittered older white man who feels like he has been left behind in “the new America” has resonated with him lately, in the wake of the polarization that surrounded the 2012 presidential election.

“He’s a muscle-car guy in a world that doesn’t have muscle cars anymore. He’s a Detroit guy in a Detroit that he doesn’t recognize … And yet, in a way, his character finds some grace by stepping beyond the world that he knows, that is no longer, into something interesting and rewarding. I thought there was a fascinating message there.”

Austerlitz notes that for the last 20 years, beginning with “The Unforgiven,” Eastwood has been wrestling with the idea of violence and its implications, which he unleashed so readily in his films of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

In this regard, Eastwood’s autumnal reflections remind the film historian of John Ford, the director of “Stagecoach,” “Fort Apache” and many other western classics, who spent his late career making films like “Sergeant Rutledge” (1960) and “Cheyenne Autumn” (1964) that looked back critically at some of the facts that westerns tended to gloss over in previous decades.

“Films of [Ford’s] like ‘The Searchers’ (1956) and ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ (1962) were questioning some of what came before, the notion of redemptive violence in American mythology. So I do see Eastwood doing some of that, though I find Eastwood’s later films to be more moving than Ford’s. And because Eastwood is also the star, the figure we physically associate with those earlier films, that adds to the complexity of this later phase.”

5. ‘Of Gods and Men’ (2010)

An order of Trappist monks is faced with a terrifying dilemma amid the violence of the Algerian civil war during the 1990s. Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale star.

“The movie deals with their daily routines — how they pray, how they work, how they eat. And it’s about the profound struggle each of them has to engage with privately as they realize that things are gradually getting worse where they are,” Austerlitz said. “They have to decide whether their duty to serve the community overrides their need to protect themselves.”

“Of Gods and Men” deals sincerely with the special calling these men have answered, a kind of commitment most people never make. “The movie moves us closer to them and yet keeps us at a distance from them. They are in some ways unknowable, and that is one of the film’s most profound virtues.”

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6. ‘Cave Of Forgotten Dreams’ (2010)

On DVD and Blu-ray from MPI Home Video. At Amazon, DVD for $15; Blu-ray, $16.

In this documentary, director Werner Herzog examines the Chauvet Cave in Southern France, where humans created drawings and paintings archaeologists date to 30,000 B.C.

“This is an unusual choice,” Austerlitz acknowledged, “in that it’s not about people, per se. These cave paintings usually can’t be seen by anyone except the people who are studying them. They’ve only been preserved as long as they have because they haven’t been exposed to the elements, and being breathed on constantly, and the other things that would destroy them.

“..It boggles the mind to imagine people existing 30,000 years ago. I can’t picture it. And yet, when you see these cave paintings, you see that they were not that different from us, in some ways. Whoever made them were artists, people who thought about their world and were trying to explain it in some way. I found that to be an exceptionally moving thing to discover.”

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7. ‘The Interrupters’ (2011)

On DVD and Blu-ray from PBS Home Video under the “Frontline” banner. The documentary aired last year as a segment of that series. At ShopPBS.org, DVD, $20; Blu-ray, $25.

“Hoop Dreams” documentarian Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz profile three Violence Interrupters, who volunteer for a program designed to stop shootings and other mayhem in Chicago’s rough Englewood neighborhood, among other areas on the city’s South Side.

“It deals with a problem that I don’t think we talk that much about at this point, which is urban violence. The ways in which young men just kill each other,” Austerlitz explained. “What’s remarkable about this film is that, instead of just saying ‘This is a terrible problem,’ and leaving it at that, the movie shows us people who are trying to stop something that doesn’t seem possible to stop.”

The titular volunteers come upon situations in which someone may lash out violently, and try to keep things under control. “Each of the people the movie follows has some sort of special gift for approaching people in crisis and figuring out how to talk to them in a way they can hear.” The attempt doesn’t always succeed, of course and the film is honest about the consequences.

Austerlitz notes that the middle-aged, white James, in “Hoop Dreams” and this film, runs a high risk of being accused of imposing his viewpoint on these stories of black teens and young adults. The fact that James is able to sidestep this pitfall is largely due to his patience as a filmmaker, in Austerlitz’s view.

“There’s a scene in which someone whose life has been touched by the Interrupters goes back and apologizes to some of the people that he harmed. It burned into my mind because it’s so incredible. If it had been a Hollywood film, you would say ‘Ugh, that would never happen — it’s so cheesy.’ But by virtue of his patience, and his willingness to follow his subjects and listen to them, James is able to capture these astonishing moments.”

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8. ‘Nostalgia For the Light ‘(2010)

On DVD and Blu-ray from Icarus Films. At Amazon, DVD, $20; Blu-ray, $22.

Another documentary, this one from director Patricio Guzmán. Guzmán takes viewers to the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, where surviving relatives try to find the remains of political prisoners presumed to have been killed by the Chilean Army in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet staged a military coup. The film also focuses on a group of astronomers who are trying to explore the nature of the cosmos.

“The two pieces of the movie seem to have nothing to do with each other,” Austerlitz said. “But as it progresses, we come to understand that both groups of people are looking to have some final understanding of their place in the world, of our place in the world. And the ways in which knowledge can provide a kind of grounding. Guzmán ties them together in an interesting fashion.”

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9. ‘Central Station’ (1998)

On DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, in Portuguese with English subtitles. At Amazon, $19.

Brazillian film about Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), a retired schoolteacher who writes letters for illiterate people at Rio de Janiero’s main train station, who has her life turned upside down when one of her clients is killed, leaving a young boy, Josué (Vinícius de Oliveira).

“This is probably the most traditional sort of heartwarming film among these choices. It follows a pretty standard rise and fall, but at the same time the performances are very touching and nuanced. Fernanda Montenegro, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance, is very compelling as this frosty, self-enclosed woman who’s been burned by life but finds a way to reconnect through this young boy. And the film really gets the details of daily life in Brazil.”

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10. ‘Best Boy’ (1979)

Documentarian Ira Wohl’s look at his middle-aged cousin Philly, then 52, who has an intellectual disability, and how he tries to craft a more independent existence with the help of his family. Winner of the 1979 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

DVD available directly from director Ira Wohl’s website, Bestboythemovie.com, for $35. Also available with Wohl’s two sequels to the film, “Best Man” (1998) which picks up the story of his cousin Philly at age 70, and “Best Sister” (2006), which focuses on his sister Frances, his primary caretaker for several years, who at age 80 is coping with her own infirmities. The three-film set is offered for $90.

“This is a film about someone who has struggles that most of us don’t have, and how some very regular people incorporate his struggles into their lives,” Austerlitz said. “It was one of the most touching movies I can remember about family life. About what it’s like to love another person.”

As with so many of the films he admires, “Best Boy” doesn’t flinch from the real problems Philly and his parents run into, which is one reason it is still used around the world to educate social workers and psychologists. Ultimately, though, the film’s warmth makes it a celebration of the human spirit.

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